Saturday October 13, 2007
Sad Find
Weasel

Walking home from work the other day I spotted a dead animal on the road less than a block from our house. Usually it's a ground squirrel, as they seem to have a proclivity for dashing in front of speeding cars (and our road has too many speeding cars), but this turned out to be something unexpected. Near as I can tell is is a member of the weasel family, possible an Ermine.

Loathe to see its body desecrated on the road I found a stick and moved it off the side, into a better resting place. I didn't realize we had any living nearby, but then again we don't really spend a lot of time watching our woods and investigating what might live inside. This year has been full of new animal spottings and thankfully most of them have been alive. We've seen quite a few porcupine, skunk, turkey, fox, hawks, and even a bear (although not at our house). I've been wondering what might be causing the increase in sightings? It could be changing weather patterns, more development work and forest cutting leaving less habitat, or maybe it's simply because there's no longer a dog wherever I go?

Update: A couple hours after posting this Zane and I drove to the dump. On the way there, a couple miles from home, I saw a lump in the ditch. Pulled over to investigate and I'm pretty sure it was a Fisher. It was still there on the drive home so I decided to grab the camera and take a picture, but by the time I got back someone had taken it. It was an amazing looking animal, even in death.